Course Delivery

Assessment

Brief description

The Legal Practice Course (LPC) qualification is a requirement for anyone who wishes to practise as a solicitor in England or Wales.

Graduates of the LPC may opt to 'rpgrade? their Diploma to LLM in Legal Practice by completing a dissertation of 13,000-15,000 words focusing on a particular aspect of Legal Practice.

The course is a part-time enrolment and students have a maximum of 12 months to complete their dissertation.

2. Choice of topic

The dissertation may be on any topic relating to aspects of legal practice for which supervision is available within the Department of Law. It may relate to one of the areas covered in the modules studied in the LPC course - in practice, most students choose a subject relating to one of these areas - but this is not a requirement. Although students are welcome to seek advice on whether their proposed topic is appropriate (see further below) the topic must be chosen by students themselves: staff will not suggest topics to them.

The dissertation must contain a significant legal content, but need not be confined to traditional legal issues or methods of analysis. It may, for example, involve a socio-legal approach, a mixture of law and economics, or legal/scientific analysis.

3. Supervision procedure

It is expected that normally students will provide a detailed synopsis and/or research plan within a few weeks of registration and then they will be aloocated a supervisor who will then consider the synopsis/plan and either give approval or suggest any appropriate modifications. Students are advised not to begin further work on the project until this approval has been obtained.

General guidance relating to the design of the research project and research strategy (how to collect and analyse materials etc) will be given as part of the induction session or via written materials related to the subject matter. In addition, students can expect that their supervisor will provide them, on request, with advice relating to strategy for their own specific dissertation. However, the responsibility for designing that strategy rests with the student, since part of the purpose of the dissertation exercise is to test their research skills. The supervisor's role in this matter is therefore limited to providing advice in response to own suggestions as to how to proceed.

Students can expect their supervisors to read a draft of their work before it is submitted, and to give suggestions about how the work could usefully be improved. Students may submit their draft in parts - for example - on a chapter by chapter basis, or as a whole. It is likely that the supervisor will have some suggestions to make, since there is usually room for improvement. Students are advised very strongly to follow the advice given. The supervisors may not, however, give students any specific indication of the grade they are likely to receive.